Arts & Smarts

If there's one thing that became clear at the AES Convention in New York last month, it's that live sound has rapidly made its way from the "Big Bang," or "Shotgun" theory, to what we at FOH call the "Sniper" approach.

It wasn't so long ago that the goal in delivering audio to large audiences essentially boiled down to "let's make it loud and hope for the best." During the formative days of live sound, that approach may have been acceptable, but these days–in spite of the fact that many people do a majority of music-listening in their cars or via MP3 players with limited fidelity–your average consumer expects more from a live show. People are plunking down top dollar to see concerts, and in addition to the visual aspect, the sound had better be good even at "cheap seats" that often sell in the vicinity of $100. With surround-sound theatre systems and plenty of video games found in homes across the country, we need to give people a reason to come out and play with us, or we'll all be out of work.

When we do these Product Galleries, we generally try to keep them spec-based in an attempt to do the clichéd–but valuable–"apple to apple" comparison. But when it comes to products for transporting and controlling digital audio, there are apples and oranges and bananas and kiwi and…you get the picture. So this time around, we took a different approach; asking the makers of some of these products a series of what we hope are pertinent questions. The answers taken as a whole give a pretty good snapshot of business and technology in a big state of flux. Anything can, and likely will, happen in the next few years. At least one major player, EtherSound, is conspicuous in its absence. We tried to get the questions answered, but we unable to do so before our press deadline. Some of these systems only transport audio, others control entire systems, and regardless of how you feel about the direction we are going in, the future is in fiber, not copper. Smaller, faster and–as more units get sold and competition heats up– cheaper. We live in interesting times.

Audix RAD-360 Wireless Mics

By Mark Amundson

Making mics and designing RF transmitters and receivers are very different things. Ask any of the major mic makers who do wireless, many of whom have separate engineering teams for developing the transducer and RF pieces of the wireless puzzle. Which likely explains why Audix stayed out of the wireless game for a long time, introducing their first wireless about a year ago.